Who Controlled The House And Senate In 2017

The U.S. Business firm of Representatives is called into session on opening twenty-four hours of the 115th Congress, Jan. 3, 2017. (Mark Reinstein/Corbis via Getty Images)

The last Congress was the first one in more than than a decade in which Republicans controlled both the House and Senate while a president of their ain party sabbatum in the White House. And while the 115th Congress was more legislatively agile than its recent predecessors, the proportion of substantive to formalism legislation was much the aforementioned, according to a Pew Research Heart assay of U.South. congressional data.

Between its inception in January 2017 and its final day on January. 3, the GOP-led 115th Congress enacted 442 public laws, the most since the 110th Congress (2007-09). Of those laws, 69% were noun (as judged by our deliberately generous criteria) – not much different from the 71% substantive share achieved by the 114th Congress, in which the Republican-controlled House and Senate faced off confronting Democratic President Barack Obama. (The 114th Congress passed 329 laws in total.)

Nearly a 3rd of the laws passed by the 115th Congress were ceremonial in nature; it was the 3rd Congress in a row in which the ceremonial share increased. Those formalism measures include 109 that renamed mail service offices, courthouses and the like – a fourth of the Congress' total legislative output.

In our regular assessments of Congress' legislative productivity, we've bandage a wide net regarding what makes a law "substantive." Basically, anything that makes a change in federal law (yet tiny) or authorizes the spending of taxpayer dollars (however few) makes the cut. Besides the measures referred to above on building-renamings, nosotros count laws as "ceremonial" if they laurels medals, designate special days, authorize commemorative coins or otherwise memorialize historic events. (Nosotros exclude entirely "individual laws," which typically exempt a single person from a single provision of general law.)

Looking back over the past 30 years, the 101st Congress (1989-1991) passed the most laws in full (650) and had the lowest percentage of substantive laws (63%). That'southward because it, similar many Congresses before, passed dozens of laws designating special observances – National Tap Trip the light fantastic Day, National Quarter Horse Week, National Library Card Sign-Upward Month and the like. That do macerated over the next few years and was largely ended by the 104th Congress in the mid-1990s.

Since then, simply one Congress has chalked upward a lower share of substantive legislation than the just-concluded 115th. That was the 110th, held subsequently Democrats retook the House and Senate in the 2006 midterms during Republican George Westward. Bush-league's final two years every bit president. Only 64% of the laws enacted by that Congress were substantive, past our reckoning.

The 115th Congress, notably, ended without funding large chunks of the federal government for the current fiscal twelvemonth (only v of the 12 regular appropriations bills were passed, in ii carve up double-decker packages). That, and the inability of Congress and President Donald Trump to agree on a temporary funding measure that either does or does non include coin for his proposed border wall, led to an ongoing fractional regime shutdown.

Merely the 115th was not entirely without achievement, though the overall share of substantive measures might suggest otherwise. Possibly its most significant law was the $1.five trillion Tax Cuts and Jobs Human action, passed in December 2017. Besides reducing income taxes on individuals and businesses, the law repealed the tax intended to enforce the 2010 Affordable Care Act's mandate that near Americans acquit health insurance.

Other major legislation, much of it passed with bipartisan back up, included the First Pace Act, an overhaul of the federal criminal justice system; a new five-year farm neb; a law intended to address the opioid crisis by, amongst other things, expanding the availability of addiction treatment; the Music Modernization Act, which rewrote music copyright and royalty rules for the digital age; a sanctions beak targeting Russia, Iran and North Korea; a nib overhauling and extending veterans' educational benefits; and the starting time comprehensive NASA authorization beak in more six years.

Note: This is an update of a mail originally published Aug. 29, 2017.

Related:

114th Congress: Congress' productivity improves somewhat in 2015

113th Congress: In belatedly spurt of activity, Congress avoids 'least productive' title